DOOM Is Now Bethesda's Second Most Hated Game On Steam

There's a lot of advantages to an open beta. Gamers get the chance to test something before release; developers get the chance to fix bugs and find out how robust their servers are.

Unfortunately, it also gives gamers the chance to absolutely pan the living snot out of your game. And that's what happened to the new DOOM over the weekend, making it Bethesda's second-lowest rated game on the service.

Many complaints from regular punters have centred on the fact that the modern DOOM doesn't really represent the ideals of an arena shooter. Uninspired and derivative are two of the most consistent cries, with users on social media and forums remarking that the game borrows too much from Call of Duty and not enough from older iD titles.

The warning screen for NVIDIA users on launch didn't leave a great impression either.

Mind you, this is a beta and you'd hope that gamers factored that in. Complaints about a 60fps cap were a bit off the mark too, considering the developers announced the frame rate would be unlocked for the full release.

The performance was slightly better on my PC, with the frame rate consistently hovering around 60 this time. The movement speed was noticeably increased. Games of Warpath were much easier to find, which made the matchmaking experience more enjoyable. And despite pings hovering around 60-70ms at their absolute best, the overall performance was quite smooth. Even a field of view slider was introduced for the open beta, which makes a huge difference for some, and there was an option to hide damage numbers.

Given how many tweaks were made in such a short period of time, I can't help but wonder whether iD were already debating them internally and wanted to wait for the public's reaction before acting. Nevertheless, they're just some of the things I noticed -- and figured the developers deserve some credit for responding so quickly to feedback.

But that wasn't enough for fans to overlook the absurdity of the Revenant, the peculiarities of the audio, the lack of weapon damage, the truly awful announcer, the presence of loadouts, auto targeting on the Gauss Cannon (a one-shot kill weapon), and the lack of audio feedback in general.

The new DOOM launches May 13. Bethesda will undoubtedly be hoping the reaction then dwarfs the reception right now -- and the next time they do an open beta, don't be surprised if comments and reviews are disabled altogether.

First off, most the reviews for beta were complete crap. I would say none of those players actually played the original Dooms or even games like Unreal Tournament. Of course this does not feel like Doom I or II. They were designed in 2D graphics and never had such things like jumping or looking up and down. Back then all you did was point to be in the right direction to hit a monster up or down at a distance. This new one felt more like an Unreal Tornament game, which was just fine for me. Granted, I was a bit disappointed at having loadouts and no guns around to pick up, but there are much worse things they could have done. It has been updated to feature more modern play style, while still having a feel of the old. Us gamers who played back then are starting to get to where we either should not or cannot put a lot of time into games anymore (getting too old, focusing on career. providing for a family, etc.). They need to still have SOMETHING there familiar to this new generation of gamers, as much as I despise those features. There were also a ton of reviews left before Beta had even opened up (players who apparently played in Alpha). Today look at the reviews everywhere else now that it has officially launched. COMPLETELY opposite opinions.

Next, I don't know about you, but I am sick of the only decent FPS games being those of Call of Duty, Halo, Battlefield, etc. It has been a long time since UT, Doom, Quake, or anything from the good days of old. Now we just need RTS games of old (besides Starcraft) to make a return...

^This. I'm thoroughly over the rewards based XP systems in contemporary multiplayer FPS. Just gimme the guns, the maps, and if I have the skill to do so I will gib yo' ass into oblivion. No unlocks, no BS.

It's personal preference.
Unlocks provide some sort of goal. Some reason to keep playing.
Sometimes a game is good enough to not need that extra incentive... sometimes not.

Ultimately any game like this will always be compared to COD or CounterStrike or Doom/Quake.
There really isn't much else besides.
Sometimes people just want a modern copy of a good original, sometimes we want something new...
I don't think there's a "one size fits all" answer.

when it comes to multiplayer - damage and survival unlocks straight up handicap new/casual players and divide the community - which is bad for everyone really in my opinion.

It means you can't just jump into a game with a friend and have a competitive match, despite having comparable skill at that type of game. Plus players end up rail-roaded into certain classes or weapons.

If it's more cosmetic, or fairly balanced (TF2 as an example) then it's ok because you have a chance; you don't join and just get destroyed because you don't have a level 25 scope unlock.

Splatoon does unlocks extremely well. The very first "gun" you get is still incredibly viable even late game and even on high level multiplayers games because of the load out and the way the game is designed. Sure you get "better" weapons as you progress but all that means is it changes the style that you play.

I think player XP is a good thing in terms of helping balance the players in each match; as in matchmaking will attempt to create a game with players of the same level (experience).

But all UPGRADE style unlocks do is give additional advantages to those that play MORE because they have unlocked more!

Veterans will already have an advantage due to;
- more experience how the game works (movement/gun mechanics/general game flow)
- they know the maps better (ie where to go/hide/watch)
- they know the objectives better
- they know the weapons better
So how is giving them another advantage (better weapons, better scopes, extended mags, etc.) a GOOD thing for the overall game play? (besides making the veterans ePeen swell)

Exactly right! You should be rewarded by becoming a better skilled player.

I hate when I don't get a chance to play a game as much as the next person, and I get penalised for that, either by not being allowed to join my friends in a match or by being hammered by someone who has spent more money / played certain parts of the game more than me.

In most games, the better players give a handicap, i.e. they suffer a penalty when playing to ensure a more even contest. The XP based shooters turn this around and give the advantage to the better players.

For years now I have loved the progression system in games, like customizing your character etc. Hell, I don't even mind cash shops these days because they have dumped the EXP enhancements and statistics giving items for cosmetic only items. I think thats fine to pay for collectors items.

But the progression system in games now, La' CoD and MOBA style progression has now really capped the distance between winning and losing. For example, most games in MOBA's, if they have lost 2 towers, most people will give up because the distance from winning is so great that they losing team will forfeit. Back in the days before all this crap the skill level was very even and when you and your team lost in a game of Starcraft, Battlefield etc. You felt like you lost for good reason.

All of these systems now, with unlocks is very cool, and different stats etc. But with items comes balance. You can't have things enhance a player 2 fold if they are already kicking your ass. Thats why a game like Battleborn and the most balanced MOBA and FPS Overwatch, HOTS and TF2, are so god damn fun, Overwatch is more or less the best game I have ever played in FPS as it dose not show stats, it really makes it feel team balanced. And when you lose, you feel not like your a loser, but that your failed! There is a big difference in feeling there. Most of all you feel like you lost because of player skill, and not because the other team had better items or more advancements.

I remember playing Quake 2 & 3 back in the day. Every game consisted of a couple of players running around with one shot railguns killing everyone as soon as they spawned... Yeah, that was "fun" *eye roll*

Publishers should be taken to task how they are labelling these 'betas'. I was prepared to let it slide in Doom's case because I thought Bethesda was only letting the PC platform have one. But it's also on consoles.

So it's not a beta. Not in the true sense of the word anyway.

That's Destiny, Street Fighter 5, and now Doom - games as platforms rather than finished products. It'd be fine if they weren't charging you 100% of the price for 50% of the service :D

the game has not be released like destiny or streetfighter 5, this is actually more stress test or limited MP demo. If you want a true Alpha/Beta you just have look at the Legion Alpha thats going on for WoW where each week a new build is released with more content and a crapload of bugs (last weeks build finally unlocked the new Destruction Warlock Spec and lvl 110)

Blizzard generally do Alpha/Beta and PTR testing pretty well. They are also in a fairly unique position to be able to take their time with their own products.
Not many other developers/publishers can do that.

What exactly is the problem with including consoles in a beta test? It'll increase the range of people who will test the build over a Windows-only release. And you're not going to discover console-specific bugs if the only wide testing is done on PC.

It doesn't make it any less beta. The OP (like myself) is likely from a time when most games were made on PC first then ported to console, so in those days a beta would only be on PC. But the case is usually the opposite these days, so if anything, it is more of a beta on console than it is on PC.

i havent touched the MP Beta at all, loaded up the closed beta to checking everything out, but really didnt like having the advanced options closed off and also not a fan of the loadout system. why ID felt they had to go with that is beyond me.

Either way i only care about the singleplayer aspect. as long as the gunplay, sounds, maps and enemie design is great and that the singleplayer takes 9-12+ hours to complete on normal mode on a first run through ill be happy

They didn't "feel the need to go with that" it is an option, it just wasn't in the beta(I agree, I didn't like how much they limited options-wise with the beta), but load-outs are completely optional and even if they weren't optional for the normal mp, there is snapmap in which you can change so many features, I'm sure things like "classic quake dm" would be quite popular in snapmap.

I enjoyed the New Order a LOT more than I thought I would. Having multiple timelines and options for stealth or all-out assaults was a pleasant surprise too.
DOOM I am going to give the benefit of the doubt until I've played the singleplayer. I played my fair share of arena shooters back in the day, and am not really fussed to return to them.

Oh was the pop-in still shitty with New Order? I thought they had fixed that since Rage, but then again I never got the chance to play it and see it for myself. Man, that sucks. The megatexture tech was such a bad gamble on Carmack's part, like I'm extremely sure that technology is the primary reason we're getting the snapmap thing instead of real, deep custom-content modding tools. The devs themselves apparently need to run whole server farms just to work with the textures in a timely manner, and that makes sense when you're dealing with an image file so massive it has over a billion pixels total in it...

First problem I had with the beta, my first match had people from the US, UK, Spain and France. So of course the lag was BS.

Second, this is an arena style game where you can spawn with any weapon. Defeating the entire purpose of arena shooters! As an extra side gametype or weekend gametype that's fine, but considering it's the base game that's just stupid. As a result, most people just run around spamming their rocket launcher or their double barreled shotgun. There's no reason to use a machine gun.

Third, as painful as it is for me to say it, they might as well just put in regenerative health. After killing someone you're most likely injured. Coming across another enemy will most likely result in your death, so you start jumping around the area collecting health packs. They're everywhere so you don't have to search far. Removing the health packs and putting in regenerative health would not make a difference.

It was for me, too, but at the time, it was an easy office network install and run, and basically there was nothing like it. Not in the multiplayer shooter space, at the time. Doom multi was for PC what Halo multi was for consoles.

I didn't play either of them for their multi, but those who did considered it to be a foundation experience.

That sounds quite different to the kinds of things you'd remember from Doom multi-player.

For me, it was the hassle of setting up an IPX network stack as an alternative bot option on some of the computers at my dad's work without breaking them for normal work (the network wasn't using NetWare, so didn't have IPX). This was with old 10Base-2 coax Ethernet, and a four player game could monopolise a significant portion of the network bandwidth due to the poorly optimised net code.

The Doom net code had each computer sending packets to every other computer, so the bandwidth grew quadratically with the number of players. Going from 2 players to 4 players would increase the bandwidth requirements by a factor of 6.

Yep, all I care about is the single player aspect. I still think it looks like it could be a lot of fun as a single player action shooter.

Also, I've heard some confusing feedback on this game with people in a single reddit thread describing the game's pace as fast, medium, slow, and very slow. How can it be that people are having such wildly different experiences? Oh, because they are stating their subjective opinions. Right. Got ya. I'll just wait and see for myself when DOOM comes out.

Friend beta tested Doom 2, and we got together more than once to LAN it in testing. Man it was a chore back then, with needing to be in the same room, cabled together, have the same version installed, and so on and so on.

did you use those coaxial cables as well and were forever loosing those damn terminators?
It was sooo worth the effort for Doom, I haven't played a multiplayer game like it since (starcraft was a different genre)

God dont ask me that, we're talking mid to late 90's since we did that. I think the nostalgia goggles are on though, because while I remember it being a hell of a lot of fun, it was 4 player... FOUR!!!

The entertainment was in the novelty of the moment and simply being able to multiplayer that way - 4 was awesome then, but a dead map today. I only ever got the invite because a) I had a PC capable, and b) I had family that was also researching VOIP at the time (specifically, VOIP with gaming in mind), so we were testing their software at the same time.

Doom 2 and VOIP, both in beta, at the same time. Aint many can say they could do that :)

But by todays standards? Hell no, I aint going back to that. Ever.

What was the quake 3rd party matching software? Kali? That was when things really came together.

I think your nostalgia goggles need cleaning mate? Doom 2 predates VoIP in any gaming related context by a good 10 years. A "PC capable" just meant a 386 or better. Are you sure you aren't thinking of Doom 3?

To repeat, family were doing research on it. Not retail applications, but original research. They were specifically looking at ingame communications and how much bandwidth it needed in regards other network data requirements.

In the era of 1996 or so, most people were on 56k dialup or worse, so bandwidth was a massive issue. You werent just going to have much space to move with once online data took its space.

At the time, they were doing this with LAN'd PC's rather than over the net, to get things right, but the purpose was for online comms. The end result was compression that got transmissions down to quite a small amount, which ultimately made its way into ICQ, Skype, etc and into commercial products you're thinking off a decade later.

Things have certainly changed since then, but the research started in the mid 90's.

I'd say certainly worse, K56Flex and X2 weren't til 1997, V.90 a year later. In 1996 a 33.6k V.34 modem would have been a luxury item. I know I certainly only had 28.8k well into 1998!

I was mostly talking about the "having a PC capable" being a noteworthy factor in "mid to late 90s". Having a PC at that stage capable of running Doom 2 would be a given, as it ran well on 1990 hardware.

Fair enough about the voice-over-data stuff though, that must have been rather interesting!

All good. The VOIP stuff was fairly early stuff, something they were doing as part of their masters, or something like that. Definitely NOT and end product thing, but those early day tests, which were done around the world btw, showed how amazingly small the comms needs were. It kinda led to mp3's as well in a roundabout way, mostly because it showed how much wasted background data there was in wav files and the like, and what you could strip out.

The doom stuff was mostly co-incidence of a friend doing testing on that around the same time. Was just a different test to the games they had been working with. Didnt help US, we were in the same room :)

I drilled a scart cable sized hole in the masonary between the bricks in my dad's study room so it went into my bedroom. Got such an arse kicking but was so worth it for OG Doom.

And on a totally different topic- second most "hated" game? Really? Hate? I hate war, tyranny, rental price hikes and Nazis. Donald fkn Trump. Stuff that genuinely sours the gut with how needlessly evil or fkd up it is. I am simply annoyed with some of the features of this game. I dislike broccoli. Folks need to chill the hell out and put things into perpective. Sorry Grunt. This bit wasnt aimed at you.

I never played Doom single player, for me Doom was the embodiment of co-operative play. My brother and I spent countless hours and ultimately succeeding in beating the original game on Nightmare. And it felt awesome.

"Doom" was over for me when #3 had no co-operative play. The Original Xbox version had a co-op mode that allowed about half the game to be played together, but the new "BFG" version lacks that.

I was going to download the beta yesterday, but just before committing I thought I'd just check and have a look at the gameplay on YouTube. It didn't take long to see that it really wasn't Doom at all. It was another Quake.

Damn, that's pretty savage. It can't be THAT bad. That E3 demo looked awesome. I'm still holding out hope, given that people are reviewing a multiplayer version that I have no intention of playing. Campaign all the way.

Anyway, it's hard to take the volume of negative reviews seriously.
A good rule of thumb is that ANY game being free on Steam will increase the number of negative reviews it gets over what it deserves. It's been a truth of F2P titles since the review system came in.

The beta this weekend was only multiplayer, so I discount every bad word about it til the single player is released. Doom was never a fun multiplayer experience in my opinion. Sure Co-op campaign would be interesting, but if I wanna play a multiplayer shooter (especially arena/deathmatch style) Doom would NOT be the game I would be reaching for ;)

I mean it's not terrible but it's not good either. if it weren't called doom it would just be another forgettable steam game that dies in early access/sells for $10. I wanted weapon picks up, game play felt sluggish, felt random. was just a mediocre game. felt like a free to play steam game.

We've seen a few multiplayer maps during an early stress-test. People are being absurdly brutal in a situation where they should primarily be giving the feedback that will shape the multiplayer gameplay in a constructive manner.

Wasn't fussed with DOOM's multiplayer in the past, got old pretty quick. Waiting on the singleplayer, because it looked like it was a blast.

The game is out in less than a month, that isn't really a beta, thats a demo. At this point, nothing major is going to be changing between now and release, it would take a few weeks just to get a patch through testing and certification even if they had one ready to go right now.

I found the game to be a lot of fun. Sure the loadout idea is done to death and the balance sucks, but it was a fast paced fragfest that I wanted from the game.

People hating on this game because "It's not the old school DOOM" need to go back and play the old school DOOM. Compared to today's shooters, DOOM is a dinosaur. Paper cut out characters, weapons that sound like nerf guns, and AI that makes a brick look smart. Then you look at multiplayer, which was nothing more than "first person to get the most overpowered weapon wins" and that's it. Mind you, people need to wait and see what the other three quarters of the game (the rest of multiplayer plus the single player campaign) before calling this "the worst game ever".

Frankly, stop holding these "old school classics" to such high-rose-tinted-nostalgia-driven perfection because they are really not all that great.

Except they are though. You can totally crack out Doom right now and have an excellent time, it's far more fun and well-made than a good number of modern games. Nostalgia goggles have nothing to do with it.

As much as it pains me to say it - even if Quake 5 was made (and was actually a Quake 5) I would have doubts over its long term staying power unless Id got creative and pumped out something different (probably in the format of a multiplayer mode that resembled something Team Fortress like).

Alternatively go with Wolfenstein and give us something RtCW-like.

Doom was the worst choice Id could have made. I suppose it wouldn't have been so bad if DOOM was made in the same vein as RtCW though (particularly the MP).

Arnna beat me to it. It's still made by iD software. Bethesda is a solid publisher, so they're as equipped as it comes in that regard. Really not sure what you were aiming for...

I loved the old doom (mainly singleplayer, multiplayer was only amazing because it was a pretty scarce concept at the time and the thought of playing these games with your friends was mind-boggling). But people are being unreasonably harsh here. Things like game speed and movement are among the easiest things to modify, and the whole point of a beta is to ascertain the most enjoyable pace for this aspect of the game.

REPEAT AFTER ME: Steam reviews are NOT newsworthy. Or accurate. Or funny (wait, no they sometimes are, not intentionally). Sure Doom isnt the best but for the love of that is holy and good in gaming stop writing stories inwhich Steam Review, Reddit Post, Metacritic review or Tweet constitute anything than can be classed as informed pieces of useful information... by all means IF they say something positive, sure then thats different, than means there has finally been a cold day in hell.

despite its flaws I loved BVS myself, sadly the internet sheeple mob rule once again prove if you yell loud enough, fun dies and replaced with stupid baaaa "I could make a game/film/book/anything better than everyone else ho gets paid to do it" baaaaa like noise.

This is upsetting. Doom was THE big AAA title I actually had anticipation for this year, since I usually have a very cynical view of AAA development in general and this looked like it would really recapture the spirit of the original games (which I only played through recently and I'm still stuck on TNT: Evilution- these games hold up remarkably well). It really bothers me to hear that they've sold out the DOOM spirit to water it down with CoD and Halo elements (because that's what the cool kids like these days) after all.

Fortunately this is only a review of the multiplayer and, I'll be honest, I don't care about multiplayer. I might have messed with it a bit, but what I was really looking forward to was the campaign, and that might still be good. Hell, they might be able to patch the multiplayer into a decent state too if peoples' issues with it are largely a matter of balance- the best thing to come from patching culture in game development is the ability to change how a game plays after it's supposedly been completed, even considerably (just look at League of Legends, which is practically an entirely different game today from what it was 5+ years ago).

It's hilarious to go to the Steam forums, though, and hear the kids screaming abuse at the "haters"- "STFU MORONS YOU CAN'T CRITICISE THIS GAME, IF YOU DON'T LIKE IT THAT'S JUST BECAUSE YOU'RE STUPID, GO PLAY SOMETHING ELSE!" Funny, but that also hits one of my berserk buttons: never, EVER tell someone they're "not allowed" to criticise something.

Quake 2, if they just put that game in a new graphics engine you could have my money. It's not a bad game, kinda fun for a while. I notice the Rage "texture pop-in" issue is still there. I miss the Quake 2 railgun.

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